The Charm School

I’d say it was my country and I ran it, not the Americans. I wouldn’t be pressured by Americans or the Kremlin to run and hide somewhere else.” Hollis added mockingly, “Create an illusion.”
    Burov nodded to himself. “Perhaps it is you who is trying to create an illusion. Well, we’ll see.”
    Lisa stood at the porch rail watching a dozen joggers run by on the sandy shoulder of the road. The men were singing as they ran, “Anchors Aweigh.”
    Burov watched them. “All the students seem to like that one. I prefer your Air Force song myself.” Burov looked at his watch. “Come, we’ll walk, if you feel fit.”
    They followed Burov down the steps of the porch and along the road. He turned down a log-paved path, and they came to a small wood-shingled cottage, vaguely American in design, set among the pine trees. Burov said, “This is a four-student residence.” He knocked and opened the door. Four young men in a small sitting room were on the floor playing Trivial Pursuit. Burov motioned to them to continue.
    Hollis was struck again by their American casualness, their very un-Russian attitudes, sprawled out on the floor, shoeless, all wearing jeans and sweat shirts. And they were alone, Hollis thought, not expecting company. He noticed that one of the sweat shirts said “Jesus Is Lord.” Another read “Nuke the Whales.”
    One of the men said to Burov in an accent that Hollis recognized as from the Virginia-D.C. area, “This Baby Boomer edition is a real bitch. The regular trivia shit is sort of general knowledge. But the Boomer stuff is tough. I don’t think most Americans even know this crap.”
    “Yes?” Burov turned to Hollis. “You play this game?”
    Hollis shook his head. “Wouldn’t be caught dead.”
    Burov asked Lisa, “You?”
    “No.”
    Burov shrugged, then said to Hollis, “Do me a favor, Colonel. Ask a trivia question of my students. Please. It will be enlightening to you as well.”
    Hollis thought a moment, then said to the four men on the floor, “What is the approximate number of Soviet men, women, and children who died during the Stalin reign of terror?”
    The four looked at one another, then at Burov. Burov nodded. “Answer, if you know.”
    One of the men replied, “I’ve read it in books and magazines. I guess twenty million is about right.”
    “Do you believe that?” Hollis asked.
    Again there was a silence.
    Burov spoke. “I don’t believe it, and neither do they. But when they get to America, they will say they believe it.” Burov added coolly, “That is not the type of question I had in mind. Go on and ask them some
trivia.
You, Ms. Rhodes. Go ahead.”
    Lisa said, “I don’t know any trivia.”
    Burov handed her a stack of Trivial Pursuit cards.
    She shrugged and flipped through them. She read, “‘What country built the TU-144, the first SST to fly and crash?’”
    The man with the “Nuke the Whales” sweat shirt answered, “The Soviet Union.”
    Lisa found another. “‘What Russian erection started rising under floodlights shortly after midnight one fateful August thirteenth, 1961?’”
    The man with the “Jesus” sweat shirt replied, “The Berlin Wall.”
    Burov said, “Thank you, Ms. Rhodes, that will be enough.”
    The young man with the Virginia accent said to Lisa, “You know, we Americans call this trivia, but some of this stuff is heavy going for your average Russki.”
    Lisa looked at Hollis, and he could see in her eyes that she couldn’t quite believe these men were Russian. Burov saw this too and said to the one with the “Jesus” sweat shirt, “We will break the rules and you can be a Russian again for a moment.”
    The man jumped to his feet and said in Russian, “Yes, Colonel.” He looked at Hollis and Lisa and again in Russian said, “My name was once Yevgenni Petrovich Korniyenko. Eleven months ago I entered this school that we call Chrysalis—this sheltered state of being during which I will completely metamorphose and emerge a butterfly. I will be named Erik Larson. I may have some vague memory of the caterpillar I once was, but I will have beautifully colored wings and I will fly in the sunlight. No one who sees me will think of a caterpillar.”
    Burov nodded, and the man sat again. It seemed to Hollis that Yevgenni Petrovich was more believable as Erik Larson. Hollis also realized, as Burov suggested, that many of these men were picked for their physical attributes as well as intelligence. A majority of